Tag Archives: The Creators Project

“A massive Hector Duarte painting greets you right as you walk in the front door, depicting an avian heart encircled by gnashing border guard dogs. It symbolizes the pieces of their spirit immigrants must leave behind. Directly next to it is an early Marcos Raya, a portrait of the artist in a bar, the countertop now a butcher’s block, a gun and bottle before him and the leering demons of his alcoholism floating just above. Together they depict the complicated reality of immigrant life, a life Salgado knows personally.”

“One thing that sets us apart is that we operate as a community center and a museum,” Big Car co-founder and Tube Factory commissioning curator Shauta Marsh tells Creators. Tube Factory is used for neighborhood association meetings, clubs, classes, and other events, as well as showing art and providing work spaces and a tool library.”

Conversations with artist and ACT UP videographer Rudy Lemcke—who has work in Art AIDS America—while living in the Bay Area first got [show curator Danny] Orendorff thinking about the intergenerational divide with the epidemic. For some, it was a war lived on the front lines, with the casualties to match; for others, a terrible but foggy memory of a tragic past. And for populations underserved by institutional efforts to treat HIV/AIDS, the epidemic has never really left, hanging on their eaves and haunting their communities.

“The installation A 240 Second Analysis of Failure and Hopefulness (with Coke, Vinegar, and other Tear Gas Remedies) consists of 160 color slides shown on two synchronized slide carousel projectors. It is a slideshow of the urban life cycle: building gets knocked down, new building gets put up, until it becomes old and/or unwanted enough or its land becomes desirable enough to have it get knocked down again. [Basim] Magdy’s films were bathed in Coke, vinegar, and tear gas remedies, in a process the artist calls “pickling,” resulting in otherworldly blues, pinks, and greens with the hazy buzz of old 3D images or ancient photos.”

“Few objects are as noble as the bath towel. It provides dryness and warmth when one needs it most and modesty when instant covering-up is comme il faut; it can carry a surprising amount of social weight, the secret flag of body politics. Then there’s Ken Kagami’s bath towel, printed in collaboration with the artist’s issue of the quarterly art publication/zine THE THING, published by artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, wherein one also receives a piece of art with every issue.

The white towel is covered in cartoonish blue scribbles of penises and vaginas, breasts and butts. More cute than comely, Kagami’s body parts are done in his signature style, simple and laced with humor, bright eyes, and happy smiles adding an anatomically incorrect touch of absurdity.”

“Interferencebuilds upon the rhombus-heavy infrastructures of digital art and information, as well as wave forms inspired by synthesizers and medical imaging devices. Finley tapes out each shape, then begins the painstaking process of painting them.The works appear backlit by bright neons, and shimmer with an ethereal iridescence reminiscent of polarized sunglasses, motorcycle windscreens, and pearls. The paintings hover between the naturalistic—the rippling, bait ball effect of Lost in the Waves—and the futuristic (a piece called Debug is built with the angular skeletons of digital animation; a histological study of corrupted computer code).”

“Anna Bogatin had lived in numerous parts of the Soviet Union before moving to America in 1992, a cultural shift reflected in her practice’s blending of the high and low tech. Picture of nature are subjected to digital studies, before being painted painstakingly by hand. The end result is a prismatic abstraction, an infographic of the natural.”

“Take, for example, the soft shades of green shot through “Stephanie – 1966 Suzuki Bearcat B105p 118cc,” or how the hot mist of the pyroclastic flow of the burnout in “Melissa – 1975 Honda CB400″ echoes in the pattern of her plaid shirt, the distress of her denim jeans, and the gleaming rubber of her boots, tires, and seat. She wants the women comfortable and showing off their vehicles; Vaun will postpone shoots if a favorite bike needs work, rather than have them shoot with a friend’s. The agency is completely returned to the rider.”

“Shattered tempered glass twinkles coquettishly, promising danger and beauty. Growing up in Brighton Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, Rolón remembers both the exquisiteness of the sun striking broken car windows in the street and the realization that something bad had happened to make that shimmering moment. These pieces in the Bochinche room take elements from the shattered window and evoke a night sky.”

“Seeking to illuminate the West’s blind spot for Southeast Asia, the Ho Chi Minh City art collective-cum-advertising company The Propeller Group produces ambitious multimedia projects through artifacts, videos, and sculptural works … The Propeller Group delves into deep issues with surprising approachability, something that can be credited to their experiences in the commercial realm. Free of haughty abstraction, they seek to make art that is both powerful and easy to grasp.”